Beware fanatics who value humans less than animals

A simple formula lies behind the event that took place recently in a graveyard in Staffordshire, we learnt this week: the lives and well-being of thousands of living creatures were worth more than one inanimate object. The fact that the object in question consisted of the bones of an 82-year-old woman whose corpse had been dug up and stolen, and that the living creatures were guinea pigs, was by the way. There was only one act of cruelty here - that against the guinea pigs.

A simple formula lies behind the event that took place recently in a graveyard in Staffordshire, we learnt this week: the lives and well-being of thousands of living creatures were worth more than one inanimate object. The fact that the object in question consisted of the bones of an 82-year-old woman whose corpse had been dug up and stolen, and that the living creatures were guinea pigs, was by the way. There was only one act of cruelty here - that against the guinea pigs.

In one of Jeremy Vine's more startling interviews on his Radio Two show, Keith Mann, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, was asked about the theft of the body of Gladys Hammond, allegedly by animal rights activists. While he had no knowledge of that particular event, the ALF man said he could confirm it was the kind of stunt (his word) that fell within the remit of his organisation, being non-violent and involving an inanimate object. In fact, if the action had brought to public attention the millions of innocent animals that are tortured and killed daily, then it had been entirely worthwhile.

And so, in a perverse sense, it was. Vine must have been expecting at least a small amount of dutiful hand-wringing about the bones of poor old Mrs Hamilton, the distress to her family and so on, because he had no objection when Mann moved into propaganda mode. Whoever the grave-robbers were, it was the ALF that reaped a welcome harvest of publicity.

Threats work. Bullying pays off. If the position of the animal rights lobbyist was predictable, that of the BBC was depressing. Facing both ways at once, it managed to express disapproval of grave-robbing as a promotional tactic while playing along with it. As Mann pointed out, he would never have been invited to express his views were it not for the desecration of a grave in Staffordshire.

That formula - an old woman's bones against a million guinea pigs - is a neat summation of the animal rights position. Extreme emotion in the form of the sentimentalisation of animal life is matched by cold, quasi-military heartlessness when dealing with humans - young, old, living, dead - who are deemed to be the enemy. It was not that Mann was suppressing sympathy for Mrs Hammond's family in his interview with Vine; he simply didn't understand why it was expected. The old woman's daughter had married one of the sons of the guinea-pig farmer. What could they expect?

Even to those of us who believe that more should be done for animal welfare, particularly in the production of food, the position of most of those campaigning for animal rights is bewildering and alarming. The level of hatred evident on their websites, the routine, deployment of that tell-tale term of abuse "scum", the morbidity of language, the violence against humans and sobbing empathy for animals: these things, suggest that some kind of mass psychological dysfunction, perhaps borne of some kind of weird species guilt, is taking place.

A liberal democracy does not quite know how to deal with this kind of stuff. Concern for animals is a good thing, we tend to think; activists, while misguided, are at least following some kind of idealism. Unfortunately, an eccentric fundamentalism has hijacked the movement, driving out any possibility of dialogue or compromise. Driven forward by people like Peter Singer, who argue that "there will be some non-human animals whose lives, by any standards, are more valuable than the lives of some humans", the movement is led by those for whom any stunt, however cruel, is justified.

When extreme positions are backed by extreme measures of protest, we had better be on our guard. There is no one more fanatical than one who believes he or she is fighting for dumb victims; when they believe that, in some cases, human life is worth less than that of animals, they become socially dangerous. This is a more serious matter than the problem of a few nutters now and then taking their activism rather too far.

In the past, Keith Mann, has been quoted as saying, "We are capable of dealing with anyone. No one has died but that time will come." On the Jeremy Vine Show, he responded similarly to a critical e-mail from a listener saying, with quiet menace, that he knew who she was, and so did many other people.

Of course, any decent society should find a place to allow people who have unusual views of the world their chance to persuade the rest of us of the error of our ways. Keith Mann seems to argue against any form of agriculture - drinking milk is "wrecking the lives of cows", he says. Others of his movement have cheerfully released mink into the wild, hastening the extinction of our indigenous water voles. Doubtless many activists would have doctrinal objections to telling a dog to sit.

But once the bullies and the name-callers are encouraged in the belief that the worse they behave, the keener the BBC will be to hear their case, then soon a spot of grave-robbing will seem a relatively minor stunt.

terblacker@aol.com